21 Feb 2016

Boris backs Brexit! Only he doesn't...

The media is all over the Boris backs Brexit story like a litter of excited puppies. Only that isn't what Boris Johnson is doing. He has said nothing about leaving the EU.

Johnson said he advocates Vote Leave, but the furthest he went in his doorstep statement was to say he wanted to 'restore some control'. That is not the language of Brexit, that is the reform and remain mantra of Elliott, Cummings and Hannan.

Johnson, like his friends in Vote Leave, isn't pushing for Britain to leave the EU. He sees a leave vote as nothing more than a bargaining chip to push for a better deal than the sham David Cameron brought back from the meeting of the EU Heads of Government. This is a shot in the arm for Vote Leave, but it does nothing for the campaign to achieve Brexit.

Thankfully at least one journalist recognised the nuance and has called it correctly.

The list of double-speaking Tories seeking to corrode the leave campaign has just grown a little bigger, nothing more. The fight to leave the EU hasn't become any easier today.